🐲 Once upon a time, in the fair city of Krakow, lived a fire breathing dragon. Many strong knights perished doing battle with this dragon who was finally defeated by a clever cobbler. The Krakovski dragon lives on in folk tales and now as a symbol for these lovely faceted crystal fancy stones. After all, you can’t make crystal without fire 🔥

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By now we’ve all heard the news coming out of Swarovski. Since their announcement last year, everyone has been scrambling to figure out what they are going to do now that these high quality crystal components won’t be accessible to the general public. If you’d like to read more about what is happening with Swarovski go here.

Just like frustrated beaders the world over, here at Eureka we have been working tirelessly behind the scenes to come up with workable solutions for our customers. Although the crystal mantle is very likely going to be handed off to Preciosa, another excellent quality European producer with a very long tradition of glass and crystal bead manufacture, they are unfortunately behind the curve when it comes to those sparkling jewel centers we all love to bezel around, namely fancy stones.

Preciosa does have some and we will be offering their full selection eventually but in comparison to the breadth and variety we all got used to from Swarovski in terms of sizes, shapes, cuts and colors Preciosa’s offerings can come as a little bit of a let down. We are confident that in the next few years this selection will increase significantly and we will all breathe a sigh of relief.

In the meantime, Eureka has partnered with several large manufacturers of crystal fancy stones to develop our own line of stones which we have dubbed Krakovski ® after an old historical family name which in turn comes from the legendary Polish city of Krakow, famous in folklore as the home of a massive fire breathing dragon.

Krakovski ® Crystals are machine cut crystal fancy stones made exclusively for Eureka Crystal Beads from a variety of specialized manufacturers all over the world including the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, China and others. On some stones the final finish application is done in the United States or Canada.

We currently offer our Krakovski stones in chatons, ovals of various sizes, cushion cut squares, rivolis, navette shaped, rectangular octagon shape, a pear shaped teardop, a three pointed trillion cut as well as chatons in settings. New shapes, colors and sizes are in the works and we will keep adding to our line as interest grows! Tell us what you want to see!

Our process includes intensive two part quality control measures so you can be sure that the items you receive have been checked and inspected by hand for flaws, inconsistencies and other problems. You can rest assured that we are striving to only offer the most excellent quality fancy stones we can.

That said, nothing will be able to match the quality of Swarovski, they were unique in this aspect and their trade secrets are not easily replicated. Our producers are working and experimenting with new techniques and new ideas daily but like any learning process, it will take time. For this reason we will note that colors can vary from batch to batch since making crystal stones is both an art and a science.

Have you tried the new line of Krakovski ® Crystals? What do you think about it? What other products would you like to see added to this line? Let us know in the comments!